Hey, I'm sure the regulars have seen plenty of these things already. I've never really "studied" lucid dreaming in any meaningful sense before, so my experiences with it have been kinda weird. I used to have fairly constant "chasing" nightmares when I was in my teens. I had a really intense dream where I finally confronted the "chaser" which cut down on the frequency, and since then the times where I have had those types of dreams I've been able to alter things slightly in order to escape. Simple stuff like "there's a door here now because I need there to be a door here" or "I'm gonna jump down this flight of stairs in one leap and be totally fine because that's how physics works now."

I'm interested in learning some more technique (or maybe just giving myself some more structure so I have to practice) for two reasons. One is that I desperately need some stress relief that I just don't have the time to work into my waking hours and I think I could manage to get in dreams if I had more than a utilitarian approach to lucid dreaming. The other is the fact that my boyfriend has absolutely horrific nightmares every night and he's willing to try out lucid dreaming again as a way to manage them better, and he's going to want someone to work with on that.

I'm not super worried about recall for either of us, we both remember a good percentage of the dreams we have and they tend to be fairly vivid. I'm mostly interested in ways to induce the "reality check" in naturally occurring dreams, so that we have a practical toolbox for dealing with nightmares.

I'd also love to hear from anyone who's had a "shared dreaming" experience, although I know that's kinda controversial.